Officials at Rebekah Children’s Services, an area nonprofit that
helps troubled families resolve issues and also provides rooms for
about 30 juveniles, have dealt with eight runaways throughout the
past two weeks.
Officials at Rebekah Children’s Services, an area nonprofit that helps troubled families resolve issues and also provides rooms for about 30 juveniles, have dealt with eight runaways throughout the past two weeks.
Employees at the home on IOOF Avenue are specially trained to restrain children, but Chief Operating Officer Robert Smith said that is always a last resort. He added that the home’s recent spike in runaways actually involved just three teens under the court system’s care who ran away at all hours of the day and that the nonprofit is trying to separate and relocate them, Smith said.
“In our world, runaways are not that unusual,” Smith said. “In this case, though, these three kids are sort of infecting one another.”
A 17-year-old male apparently wanted to go to a party he heard about at his nearby school, Smith said, and he recruited a 15-year-old female at the home to come with him. That encouraged another juvenile female to split, but Smith said physically coercing children who have faced abuse, neglect and molestation in their pasts is rarely prudent. However, he acknowledged this can cause headaches for police officers who Rebekah employees must call if a child has not been seen in 30 minutes. Between March 27 and April 5, police reported a total of eight runaways from the home, all of whom have since returned on their own volition or with help from police, Smith said.
“I know this can be frustrating for police because our employees are highly trained in restraint techniques, but each kid is different and kids with abuse could be traumatized by force,” Smith said. “That’s why we will only put our hands on kids if we know it’s safe.”
And every time contact does occur, employees must document it. For all these reasons, staff only use force about four times a month with a few of the 30 children staying at the home, Smith said. That’s a small fraction of the 2,400 juveniles Rebekah Children’s Services helps each year through its educational seminars at local schools, county-wide mentor and adoption programs, gang interventions, meetings with local families facing problems, and various outpatient therapy and clinical help.
“We offer a huge array of services,” Smith said, adding that a recent federal law extending the dependency age for children under government care from 18 to 21 years old dovetails with a state bill authored by California Assembly Representative Jim Bell – a Democrat representing areas of San Jose, Saratoga, Campbell, and portions of Santa Clara and Los Gatos. The state legislature will consider it April 14, according to state legislative records.
